School, giving promise of the efficiency which
afterward distinguished her official career.
Graduating in November, 1850, Miss Hooker
was elected first assistant in the Oliver High
School, Lawrence, Mass., T. W. T. Curtis being
principal and George A. Walton master of the
Grammar school in the same building. Miss
Hooker afterward became an assistant in the
Hartford High School, remaining until April,
1854.
She was married October 1, 1856, to the Rev.
William Banfield Capron, of Uxbridge, Mass.
They were appointed as missionaries of the
American Board to Madura, South India, and
sailed in an ice ship for Madras, November 21,
the .voyage taking one hundred days. On ar-
riving in Madura Mrs. Capron, was put in
charge of the Madura Girls' Boarding School,
now well known in the Madras Pre.sidency as
the Madura Girls' Training and High School.
Mr. Capron during this time was building a
house in Mana Madura, thirty miles ilistant,
to which they removed in 1864, the lady in
charge of the Girls' School having returned
from her furlough in America. Mrs. Capron's
previous service was the prehule to the various
forms of educational work of which she
had charge until 1886, with the exception
of one furlough of two years, from 1872 to
1874.
The work of a foreign miss'onary naturally resolves itself into two lines. There is the care for the planting, growth, and development of the Christian community. This should be self-propagating and self-sustaining, and to this end should all training be directed. There is also the endeavor to uplift all those within one's sphere of influence. The first step in the for- mer lies in the little day schools in the villages, planned to give instruction to the children of Christians; but these in all cases will include many more who are drawn by the attractiveness of a school so differently conducted from the sing-song drone of the ordinary school-master of India. When it is considered that each station in charge of a resident missionary comprises from thirty to one hundred villages, in which are these schools, it will be seen that the missionary becomes a superintendent of schools. It is a gala day, indeed, when the missionary lady comes to inspect the school. On such occasions there is the selection of the clever boy or bright girl, whether from a Christian family or not, to come to the next stage in this educational scheme.
Station boarding-schools are at the station of the resident missionary, and his wife is in charge. Here are the best pupils from all the villages, numbering sometimes even a hundred. Selections from these pass on to the girls' high and training-school at the central station, and also to the high school and normal school, or college for the boys. The theological school completes the equipment.
Not included in the above, we find the Hindu girls' day schools and the Anglo-vernacular day schools for boys, both of which receive pupils who are shut out from the boarding-schools on account of caste, yet are eager for education. Attachments formed in these schools have proved in after years helpful and delightful. Many of the boys pass on into government colleges, and later, becoming officials under the English government, never forget the teaching and influence of the missionary lady who touclu^d their lives in younger days.
In October, 1876, in the midst of these ac- tivities added to all that ilevolves upon the missionary himself, Mr. Capron was suddenly called to higher service above. A graduate of Yale College and of Andover Theological Semi- nary and for a number of years principal of the Hopkins Grammar School at Hartford, Conn., before its union with the high school, he was well equipped for his life work. Accurate in business methods, of rare judgment and sym- pathetic nature, he was greatly endeared to his associates. Won by his unfailing kindliness of manner, the Hindu comnumity revered him. He originated and established the Madura Widows' Aid Society, which is a lasting monu- ment.
In 1876 Mrs. Capron removed to the city of Madura to superintend the work for women and girls. Here she remained for ten years, or until her return to America. There were three day schools for Hindu girls, and another was soon added. These four schools provided for nearly four hundred girls of the higher castes a blessed retreat from the aimlessness and ig-
